Within the scope of the present invention, flat glass panels are to be understood to be both panels of glass and panels of glass ceramics which in general have not yet been ceramized and possibly of further materials for which the method described may be used.
In the continuous manufacture or drawing of flat glass, the glass strip, after it has cooled, is scored at predetermined intervals in a direction transverse to the direction of drawing and is broken along the score lines transverse to the direction of drawing to form so-called untrimmed panels. These untrimmed panels still have irregular edges from the drawing process, so that for the lateral straightening of the untrimmed panels marginal strips, so-called rims, also have to be broken off after scoring. Further, the belt width of the drawing plant in general does not correspond exactly to the width for the products to be manufactured, so that the untrimmed panels have to be divided yet again into two or more finished panels after their edges have been straightened.
To this end, the untrimmed panels are removed in accordance with a known procedure from the continuous drawing plant and are subjected to so-called centre breakage in a separate apparatus. To this end, the untrimmed panel was securely clamped by means of one side and a freely projecting part panel was broken off by bending, and then fell onto a conveyor located somewhat lower down in order to be delivered to further processing from there. Here, it is disadvantageous for a continuous production flow that one has to operate here on two planes and that the separated-off part panel has to fall a distance, albeit a small one, after which, moreover, it does not lie back in a strictly horizontal alignment, so that with separated-off part panels there is a risk of breakage. The marginal strips to be separated off and no longer re-usable are generally broken off and disposed of by hand.
The scoring and breaking of glass is a process which is known per se and which functions unproblematically simply with applied bending stress if both or one of the parts to be broken can fall down freely. This applies for example to the marginal strips, which do not need to be held even during breaking and can fall down freely at least for a certain distance directly after breaking off. However, it is more problematic to divide a glass panel into two part panels to be further processed, since they both have to be held securely during the breaking procedure by bending in order to prevent unintentional shattering of a part panel to be re-used. This secure holding of the part panels to be produced results, however, in the edges of the separating point which have become free striking against one another directly after breaking by the application of a bending stress, as a result of which undesired edge chippings are produced.